History is our memory, which sometimes tends to be fleeting or play tricks on us. We repeat what we have remembered, weave stories, occasionally write them down for ourselves or for posterity.

In order to keep/capture memories, we can embed them in objects, buildings or photographs. Then these objects carry history with us. Sometimes others add their personal traces, marks and thoughts to the same items. At the intersection of such private reminiscences anchored in objects seen by us every day, history is created. But not the one that a respectable publishing house will offer us in twelve saffian-bound volumes, not the one that may count on a cyclical journalistic programme on TV during prime time, not the one that will become a canon for high school senior year. This is microhistory. Not at all less important.

Our permanent exhibition Microhistories. Łódź and its People tells the story of multicultural textile Łódź from the perspective of its residents’ everyday life. Its heroes’ fates are presented over the 19th and 20th century against the background of historical and social events. These microhistories were inspired by family memories, diaries and interviews being the record of oral history by the eldest Łódź residents. The multi-narrative tale begins in 1895 with the story of Florentyna Bennich, the mother of a well-known local factory owner, and ends in 1985 with the story of Halina Klima, a retired Russian teacher. Visiting the exhibition, you will learn about the Olszyckis working at Poznański’s factory, see how the everyday life of the large Jewish family of Chaja and Abram Piernik looked like, peer into the tailor’s workshop of Mr Liberski and the flat of militiaman Kondraciuk in the times of the Polish People's Republic.

Various human fates, ups and downs, joys and hardships of everyday life. The narrative is cemented by a common thread - the picture of textile Łódź, the transformation of a dynamically evolving city that determined the lives of its residents. In addition to reconstructed residential interiors and craftsman’s workshops from a given period, the exhibition offers context rooms that refer the presented microhistories to broader realities of living in Łódź.

We have prepared a series of articles about Łódź in 19th and 20th century to make it easier to understand our exhibition in broader historical, economic and sociological context.

Curatorial team: Anna Dąbrowicz, Damian Langner, Zofia Snelewska-Stempień

Expert consultants: Agnieszka Bohdanowicz, Marcin Gawryszczak, Agnieszka Wojciechowska-Sej

Texts: Agnieszka Wojciechowska-Sej

Set design team led by Maja Pawlikowska:
Magdalena Gonera, Tomasz Rolniak, Michał Trzeciak

Context room setting: Filip Appel

Lighting design: Artur Frątczak

Exhibition producers: Beata Bocian, Aleksandra Kmiecik, Paulina Kowalczyk, Karolina Melon.